Haitink does the best Shostakovich 15
April 11th, 2007 Posted in classical music, shostakovich
Not too much time for a long lengthy update today I think. We just came back from a boys night out at the graduate student center of events (which is sadly lacking really, but they do have one dollar beers) and it’s a little late so I can’t really think properly. However, there’s been some major comparative listening going on in the last couple of days of Shostakovich’s symphonies, namely, Haitink vs. Rostropovoch vs. Jansons, and it deserves at least a little commenting.
Particularly Symphony No. 15, Op. 141, which as regular readers know is one of my all time favorite pieces. Anyway, one of the most harrowing, icy parts of this splendid piece is right at the end. It’s the restless, crawling percussion ending: the tipping and tapping which at least one person has claimed to be an allusion to the life support machinery whirring through Dimitri’s hospital room in his last days.
It seems that normally people take this at a rather fast clip. I should nip down to the music library on campus and check out what the tempo marking is, but it sounds infinitely better when Haitink does it. He oozes it to a standstill, taking it at about half the speed that the other two conductors I mentioned above do, and it sounds incredible. Every note is played with finality, it’s incredibly menacing like, as another commentator suggests, golden light glistening over black depths. I don’t think anything else I have heard can compete with Haitink’s glacial ending. It’s awesome.
